A Pinay mom (and grandmom!) from Cavite and Rizal blogs on her insights & anecdotes about her Filipino family life, home, motherhood, parenting, lifestyle, health, home & fitness tips, entertainment, current issues and more...

Friday, September 19, 2008

Back when Robert Redford was the hottest male star, I found a diet book on sale at National Bookstore. The book was titled Eating Man's Diet. Of course I bought it for I was intrigued by its title. Ever the perpetual dieter, the book held a lot of promise for me. Eat and Diet at the same time sounds really promising. The book was written by Thomas Sharkey. I Googled the name and found a Thomas Starkey who is a boxer, a biochemist, an artist, a sailor and one who has been missing since 1999. So there. I cannot say for sure the who and the what of the book's author. One thing, there is actually a used copy of Eating Man's Diet on sale at Amazon.com for $1.77. The book helped me to lose weight. How?

The basic principle of Sharkey's book is that you can eat anything, as in anything that you like to eat. There are no restrictions. Of course, knowing full well that fat and empty calories are not good, it is well if consumption of these food is limited. Anyway, Sharkey's diet plan goes like this. First you have to set a weight goal. Let's say a small framed 30 year old woman stands at 5'3" and weighs 150 lbs. Based on the the height and weight table for women her ideal weight is from 111-124 lbs. Let's say her target weight is 115 lbs - meaning she has to lose 35 lbs. The daily caloric requirement of a woman that age, frame and height is from 1,800 to 2,000 calories.

To lose a pound of weight you have to burn 3,000 calories. Here's the regimen. The woman has to eat 1,800 - 2,000 calories every other day: say Monday, Wednesday and Friday. On Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, her caloric intake must not exceed 900. On Sunday, she starts again with 1,800-2,000 calories and so on. On the low-calorie-intake days, the subject saves or burns 900-1100 calories or more. If she exercises on top of her dieting, then more calories would be saved. Losing a pound per week is attainable with this regimen. Work your eating days to coincide with parties or events so you would not feel cheated. If you fail in your non-eating days, cheer up! Start all over again. This diet works. I should know. It worked for me.